Prinzipienfragen in der Naturwissenschaft

Abstract

PROF. VERWORN detects mystical murmurs in the scientific camp, and is full of apprehension of coming dangers, for “mysticism is the negation of scientific thinking.” Naturalists have been working out a monistic interpretation of the world, but there have been symptoms of faint-heartedness lately, especially before two questions, which the author states in the following terms:—Do vital processes depend on the same principles as the processes in inanimate nature? Are psychical processes referable to the same principles as those on which bodily processes depend? Verworn assures us that both these questions may be confidently answered in the affirmative, for the world is one, with the same principles, or rather with one principle throughout. What that “principle” is we have not been able to discover from the lecture, but we are assured that it is not a “mystical principle.”